Grit thought of the kelpie who had blocked their entrance; for all his posturing, he was just as scared as the other faeries.
“You should have told me, Ravene,” said Grit, feeling her temper rise again. She clenched her fists to her sides.
Ravene’s expression immediately closed off, ever the calm and unruffled street fae. “No, I shouldn’t have,” she said coolly, jumping down off the bricks. “We may let you tag along for a few larks, Grit, but our business isn’t your business, and it never will be.”
“How . . . how can you say that?” asked Grit. “You just shoved a dying faerie in my face, but it’s none of my business?”
Ravene was unmoved. She shook her head. “Not all of us have a castle to run home to when the sun rises, Grit. You think being a Free faerie is all foraging for bottle caps, moonlit revels, and chasing cats, but it’s not. It’s facing the iron world with nothing but your wings and your wits. And you . . .” She trailed off, her gaze wandering to Grit’s back. “You’re just not one of us.”
For the first time in a long time, Grit was speechless. True, Ravene and Remus were a few years older, and certainly wiser in the ways of the human world outside the Arboretum, but Grit had thought the street faeries accepted her for exactly who she was. But Ravene had just made it perfectly clear that as a princess of the Seelie Court—and a grounded one, at that—Grit would never truly fit in with them. And if she couldn’t do that, Grit was sure she would never fit in anywhere.
4.
IT’S ELECTRIFYING
Carmer, Kitty, and Antoine the Amazifier had arrived in Skemantis just the evening before, but Carmer already thought he could get used to the place. Hardly anyone stopped to stare at his patched suit and oversized hat like they did in the small farming towns the Amazifier frequented. Carmer had already walked past a set of identical twin old men in matching lederhosen, a woman smoking a pipe nearly as tall as herself, and a ballerina marionette performing for a delighted crowd without any visible strings attached, and he’d decided that the people of Skemantis were very used to the unusual—especially around the time of the Magickal Symposium. Someone like Carmer was hardly worth making a fuss over.
He was surprised to see so many people out and about this early in the morning, but he supposed Skemantis was one of those cities that never really slept. It was a different pace of life than he was used to, and all the people and steam carriages and trams rushing about were rather overwhelming for a boy who spent most of his life on the open road. He could study and tinker all he liked, but actually being in the technology capital of the coast, with the Relerail zooming over his head, airships and steamboats alike docking by the river, human factory workers and automata working side by side—that was a new experience entirely.
Carmer stifled a yawn and watched Kitty do the same on stage. It really was quite early. He would have more time to explore the city later, but for now they needed to rehearse. Thanks to a late and hasty entry into the competition (relying mostly on the Amazifier’s dwindling reputation to get them in the door), the Amazifier had been saddled with one of the first rehearsal slots of the day: seven o’clock in the morning. It was going to be a long day.
The Seminal Symposium of Magickal Arts was held in the Orbicle, a grand theater known just as much for its magicians as its ballets and plays. Unlike the smaller and shoddier vaudeville houses often frequented by illusionists, the Orbicle was just as large and decadent as the state opera house down the street. Only the best talent headlined there, and every week saw regular performances by the greatest magicians from all over the world.
Carmer had been able to see the Orbicle’s roof before they even reached the city, a great circular dome that shone like a fabled golden egg. Once inside, looking up was dizzying; chandeliers the size of carriages hung from the frescoed ceiling, where nymphs, gods, and goddesses Carmer vaguely recognized from his lessons played out their timeless scenes above the audience’s heads. The three tiers of seats could fit almost three thousand people, Carmer had heard, though now they faded into blackness under the brightness of the stage lights. He imagined six thousand critical eyes trained on him and gulped. Carmer spent more time backstage than on it to facilitate the Amazifier’s illusions, but he couldn’t help feeling nervous.
While the Amazifier talked with the stage manager about the next lighting cue, Carmer ducked away from the wings to look for the entrance to the trap room; he would need to be very familiar with the underbelly of the stage before tonight. He was hurrying along the crossover to the prompt box to ask someone where he should go, when he ran straight into someone striding around the corner.
“Ah, sorry!”
“Do watch where you’re going,” snapped the boy Carmer collided with, rubbing his shoulder. He was finely dressed in a tailored black suit, with long blond hair pulled back in a sleek braid. Carmer saw a flash of silver metal underneath the boy’s cuff when he raised his arm—probably an expensive timepiece of some sort, judging by the rest of the boy’s costume.
“Sorry,” said Carmer again, shrinking back a little. Though the blond boy couldn’t have been much older than Carmer, he walked like he owned the place, and he definitely wasn’t dressed like a stagehand. “I don’t know my way around here too well.”
The boy looked Carmer up and down. “Clearly,” he said. “Here for the competition, are you?”
Carmer nodded and fidgeted. He didn’t fancy standing there making small talk with someone who looked at him like he was an unpleasant bug they wanted to squash.
“Can you point me toward the trap room?” Carmer asked.
The boy gestured lazily to his right but said nothing.
“Thanks,” Carmer said, resisting the temptation to bump the boy’s shoulder again as he walked past.
“Good luck to you and your master, Carmer III,” said the boy to Carmer’s retreating back. “You’re going to need it.”
Carmer whipped around. “I never said my —”
The boy was gone.
“— name.”
It took Carmer another five minutes of fumbling around in the dark and a missed cue before he realized the boy had sent him off in the entirely wrong direction.
Good luck, indeed.
After rehearsal at the Orbicle, Carmer spent the day at the International Exhibition, listening to lectures on mechanics, steam engines, electrical wiring, and all manner of gadgets until his head was swimming with facts and figures and his folder was overflowing with hastily jotted notes—but it was finally time for the main event that he, the other scholars, and the people of Skemantis had been waiting for.
Titus Archer was much different in person than Carmer had expected. Though the posters for the Titan Industries expo showed a stern, confident, and adventurous-looking man, Archer cut a slightly less impressive figure in the flesh. The face that Carmer had pictured as angular and imposing was actually long and flat, with a rather weak chin and a hint of flabbiness around the jowls. Though it was hard to judge height at this distance, Archer could hardly be considered tall.
Fortunately, Carmer quickly recovered from his mild disappointment. Who cared what Archer looked like when his inventions spoke for themselves? Carmer was hardly one to judge by appearances, and it couldn’t be denied that Archer had a commanding presence. Every eye in the audience was glued to the stage—or, in this case, the altar.
Well, what used to be the altar. The main event of the Skemantian International Exhibition was held, strange as it might seem, in an old cathedral. It was just one part of a parcel of such buildings in the area, collectively known as Theian Foundry, which formed Titus Archer’s personal research and development facility.
Not all events in the expo were open to the public, but this one—the unveiling of the Titan Industries’ newest invention—was plainly welcoming to the average people whose lives it might one day improve.
“Now, I know I’ve kept you gentlemen waiting,” said Archer teasingly. When a not-so-subtle cough interrupted
him from somewhere in the audience, he corrected himself, “And ladies. What we’ve already demonstrated today shows the progress we’ve made with current technology. How to make our airships fly faster, our Relerail more efficient. All very valuable in the present. But what I am about to show you, this . . . this is the future.”
The stained glass windows of the church cast rainbow shadows over a towering dynamo that took up most of the altar—or, at least, it looked like a dynamo, with two thick pillars and a heavy iron base surrounding the copper-wrapped rotor. A ring of unlit streetlamps surrounded it. Yet there was no steam turbine, boiler, water inlet, or exhaust in sight. What would start it spinning?
“As most of you know, Titan Industries is one of the leading producers of coal and natural gas on the East Coast. It’s our gas that lights the streetlamps of Skemantis at night to keep our city safer, to keep our factories open longer and our homes bright and warm.”
“And you who sets the prices,” someone muttered. There was a small chorus of amused assent.
Instead of ignoring the heckler, however, Archer looked the man square in the eye. “Yes, sir. I’ll be the first to admit that gas has its drawbacks and inconveniences. Both to ourselves and to this planet we call home. No doubt many of you have been following the recent developments in electric lighting. But even the most sophisticated dynamo to date still needs a steam turbine to spin it, and a furnace and a boiler to power that. How many of you, your employees, or your comrades are forced to breathe in coal dust every day? How many lost a fortune or a friend in the disaster at the Vallows?”
Carmer had no idea what the Vallows were, but it didn’t sound good. More than a few hands went up.
“What if I told you that Titan Industries has recently patented a previously untapped energy source, one that is both clean and unlimited? That we have refined a method of producing electric light that cuts down on nearly half the machinery required and all of the waste?”
Mutters of disbelief cut through the crowd as they peered at the new dynamo.
“My friends, I present to you: the Hyperion.”
Archer stepped back and flicked a long switch at the base of the dynamo.
Prepare to be amazed, added Carmer silently. Archer was certainly a showman.
Carmer’s amusement was cut short by the dynamo roaring to life. The rotor began spinning of its own accord, a strange glow emanating from the copper coils. Silver sparks skittered across the surface, crisscrossing each other in wild patterns. The streetlamps around them burst on, enveloping them all in a light that was more like sunshine than any artificial light Carmer had ever seen. A chorus of oohs and aahs rose up from the gathered crowd. Inside each lamp, Carmer could just make out the silver sparks behind the frosted glass globes, dancing and crashing into one another with such speed it was hard to tell they were moving at all.
Though beautiful, there was something unsettling about the machine. Once he could tear his eyes away from the lamps, Carmer looked at it more closely. The sparks along the rotor hissed and snapped and made the air around the machine crackle with energy. There was something rather . . . violent about it.
Questions from the crowd soon peppered the awed silence.
“How does it work?”
“When will this technology be hitting the streets?”
“Is it compatible with existing electric wiring?”
Archer held up a hand to silence them and grinned.
“All in good time, my friends! On a most basic level, the core of the Hyperion is a synthesis of the energies that already run throughout the earth. Some of you, particularly our alchemists, have worked with telluric currents before. The combination of magnets used in the Hyperion, in addition to my own special composites, amplifies these low-frequency currents that already run just below our feet and transmutes them into usable electricity.”
More hands shot up in the air to have their questions answered, but Carmer was already wandering closer to one of the lamps. It would be more helpful for him to take a closer look at the Hyperion than to listen to Archer dodge questions about it, and he wanted a chance to explore before the rest of the crowd descended on the machine. The faintly pulsating globe seemed to beckon him forward, and before he realized what he was doing, he’d reached out a hand to touch it.
“Careful, lad!”
Archer’s voice cut through Carmer’s reverie and his hand froze in mid-air. A hundred pairs of eyes turned to look at him at once. He snapped his hand back down to his side.
“The globes can get rather hot,” explained Archer. His expression was friendly, but there was something hard behind his eyes that Carmer hadn’t seen before. “I’ll kindly ask all of you to keep your hands to yourselves, as difficult as that is for curious minds.”
Carmer nodded. A few of the other spectators looked disappointed, too, but held their tongues.
“We wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt, now, would we?”
5.
FRIEND OF THE FAE
After spending the night in the sewer tunnels, lost and alone, Grit was more than a little on edge. She’d left Ravene behind again, and this time, the street faerie didn’t follow. It was well into morning by the time she found an outlet close enough to the surface to attempt the long and slippery climb up. Bressel had been right about Ravene and the street fae after all. And after seeing the poor fae they’d made her examine . . .
Grit clamped down on the thought and pushed it out of her mind. She had to keep her wits about her, here on the ground level of the streets. She scurried along in the shadows of a dingy alley, constantly on the lookout for humans and wild pests who were unlikely to think much of her royal status. She was craning her neck as far as it would go, searching for any sign of the way to the Arboretum, when she felt it—the presence of fae.
The surge of power entered her consciousness so suddenly it made her dizzy. There were at least half a dozen faeries behind it, Grit was sure. Her heart leapt; her people were near, and a small part of her dared to hope a few Seelie Court members had come to take her back to the Great Willow—though she would never admit that to them.
She tracked the presence of faerie magic doggedly, heading west, but her progress was slow on foot, and her sense of it began to fade as swiftly as it had appeared. Grit ran as fast as she dared in the crowded streets, but only minutes later, the energy disappeared altogether. It was as if a giant iron door had slammed in front of whatever magic was being cast.
Grit skidded on her heels as she rounded the next corner, desperate to find the source of the magic, and stopped dead in her tracks. Four human boys were blocking her path in the alley ahead, and by the looks of things, at least three of them were itching for a fight.
“Looks like we’ve got him now, boys,” said the head goon, grinning. There was always a head goon.
Carmer should have known that things wouldn’t change in Skemantis, not really. After the Hyperion demonstration, he’d lost his way in the maze of the city’s cobblestone streets and soon found himself being followed by a group of less-than-savory-looking characters. This time, as was usually the case, the aggravating party was a group of local boys who had come to the decision—Carmer wished he knew how—that the magician’s apprentice was a funny little chap, much too stuck up for his own good, and was therefore in need of a good pounding by fellows made of far sterner stuff. They were all too happy to provide this service to the community in a swift and brutal fashion.
“Whatchya doin’ with that fancy hat . . . fancy boy?” taunted another, apparently unable to come up with more than one adjective at a time.
Carmer almost wanted to laugh. Yet he couldn’t stop his hand from self-consciously reaching up to adjust his tattered top hat. He stood up straight and tried to meet his tormenter’s eye.
“It’s a magician’s prerogative to present himself in a manner befitting his profession,” he wanted to say, astounding them all with his eloquence in the face of adversity. Yet all that came out of his mouth was
a few mumbled words that vaguely expressed the thought, “’S a magic hat.”
The boys spat at him and edged closer, ready to come to the end of their game. Defeated once again by his own traitorous tongue, Carmer prepared for the inevitable.
The leader picked up a broken fence post lying in the mud and slapped it against his hand with a wet thwack. Carmer flinched and forced himself to think.
The magician’s apprentice currently had five small smoke bombs in his jacket pocket. They were supposed to be for that night’s performance, but they might also be his chance at escape.
Traditional smoke bombs, Carmer found, left an acrid smell in the air after they deployed, like the bottom burned out of a cooking pot. With a few chemical alterations, Carmer had developed a serum to counter this effect: when the bomb hit the ground and the release mechanism was deployed, it also released his counteragent. (He was particularly fond of the one that smelled like cinnamon.)
Well, it should release his counteragent. He’d been testing them along the road by dropping them out of the Moto-Manse’s windows until the Amazifier groused that Carmer was going to suffocate Eduardo with all of his “arcane vapors.” Carmer hadn’t had a chance to try them out since they arrived in Skemantis.
There’s no time like the present, Carmer thought ruefully. He took a deep breath, set his eyes on the mouth of the alley, and shoved his hands into his pockets. Before the bully could even raise his weapon, Carmer tossed the small metal cylinders out in front of him. The other boys backed away in surprise.
The smoke bombs seemed to fly in slow motion toward Carmer’s adversaries. He could only imagine their surprise when the billowing smoke would explode outward, catching them sputtering and coughing while Carmer sped off, victorious at last.
He held his breath as the smoke bombs descended, clattered on the cobblestones, and remained stubbornly, terribly, and totally intact.
The surprise was wiped from the boys’ faces as quickly as it had appeared. The sausage-shaped cartridges rolled harmlessly into the gutter. Carmer could only watch, bewildered and helpless, as his grand plans joined the refuse of Skemantis. The head goon began to laugh, clutching his sides; the others joined in until they were all but crying with mirth.
The Wingsnatchers Page 4